This is Gutsy

As the release of the next version of Xubuntu, 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, is set to arrive soon, I took a test drive with the release candidate, looking for bugs to be solved just before the final release, and to find out what’s new. This release will bring you many improvements inherited from Ubuntu but also tons of Xubuntu-specific improvements. Prepare for a long read😉

Oh, by the way, I also made a little screencast giving a quick overview of the new features that you can download in Ogg (recommended) and Avi formats. And yes, it’s kind of random (I didn’t prepare it), but at least you can get a quick peek at the look and feel of Gutsy.

The looks

The very first thing you will notice in this release is Xubuntu’s spiffy new theme (MurrinaStormCloud) and the sleek new background image.

To be honest, when I saw it on screenshots, I was quite unimpressed. However, once you actually get to use it, ut just “feels right”. What’s more, this theme uses the Murrine engine. Basically, this means that it will run faster and feel more responsive than the previous theme which used the Clearlooks engine.

Software updates

In the six months that have already passed since Xubuntu’s previous release, much of the software included enjoyed updates that added a few new features.
For example, Ubuntu’s Add/Remove… application, for easy installation of additional software, has had some minor improvements, mainly in the use of language.

Even though Firefox 3 has been released yet, there are some minor but very useful additions to good ol’ Firefox 2.0, provided by the Ubufox extension, allowing the installation of third-party enhancements to Firefox to be done “the Ubuntu way”.
The first one can be seen when you open the Add-ons window from Tools->Add-ons. At the bottom right-hand side you will observe a link that says Get Ubuntu Addons.

Clicking it opens the familiar Add/Remove… window from which you can browse through some Firefox extensions that are packaged specifically for Ubuntu. Don’t worry about the limited amount of available extensions though, because you can still install extensions the way you used to.

The second one takes over the installation of plug-ins (software that allows you to play certain media, such as Flash, from within Firefox). In opening a website with an element that requires the installation of a plug-in, you are presented with the normal FIrefox placeholder in place of that content. However, clicking it doesn’t open the normal Firefox plug-in finder service you are used to, but a customized Ubuntu one. For example, when you try to open a Flash file, you are presented with two available Flash plug-ins: the official Adobe one, and the open source Gnash. Since Adobe’s one supports all Flash versions up till version 9, that choice is selected by default.

Selecting one of them and clicking Next opens a confirmation window.

The plug-in will then be downloaded and installed the Ubuntu way.

Once it’s finished you can close the window and you’ll be back in normal Firefox, which will know the plug-in to be installed.

And ta-da! You can view the content you so longed to see! (It still says on top, though, that a plug-in is needed, but that will disappear when you leave the page)

Xubuntu Gutsy also ships Pidgin 2.2.0. The reason it is listed under Software updates is because Pidgin is the new name of Gaim, the Multi-Protocol Instant Messaging client (for MSN, Google Talk, etc.) which used to be included in Xubuntu. Pidgin includes support for even more protocols than Gaim used to do, so you can really keep in touch with all of your friends.

Also included is the awesome new Gimp 2.4, which is an enormous improvement over the previous version (2.2), with so many enhancements that it would be one hell of a job to list them all here. Luckily, an extensive overview of new features in the Gimp 2.4 is already available. In any case, I’m loving it already🙂

New software

Apart from the usual software updates, Xubuntu Gutsy features a whole host of new software which will all greatly improve your user experience and does away with under-developed or featureless applications.

The Screens and Graphics application is an Ubuntu application that is part of a bigger effort called BulletProofX, which makes sure that you will never be left without a graphical environment. If it so happens to crash, no longer will you be presented with a blue screen with unreadable text, instead, you will be presented with the Screens and Graphics window allowing you to reconfigure your graphical settings. You can also run it normally, allowing you to easily configure multiple screens.

You can also use it to select a graphics card driver.

You can choose a driver by the name of the driver, or by the model of your monitor.

Also just as Ubuntu, Xubuntu Gutsy ships ntfs-3g. This does not really interest me, because I hardly know what ntfs is, but I still saw it was a Good Thing™ when I got my dad to boot Xubuntu Gutsy, who was delighted that he could delete files from his Windows partition.

Then Xubuntu inherits from Ubuntu the latest Linux kernel (core) that includes dynticks. Again, I’m not too sure what exactly it is, but I read that it makes sure Xubuntu uses less power and makes your computer produce less heat, which should especially appeal to laptop users.

Yet another thing inherited from Ubuntu of which I don’t know exactly what it does: AppArmor. According to Wikipedia, AppArmor is software that provides yet another layer of security allowing for even stricter definitions of what software is allowed to do.

To replace Xarchiver, which was viewed by some as user-unfriendly, Gnome’s file-roller Archive Manager is now included. It allows you to easily create archives, in formats like .zip, .tar.gz or .tar.bz2.

It also easily allows you to open compressed archives and view the contained files.

However, it is slower than Xarchiver, and since that one is still being actively developed I am of good hope that by the next release of Xubuntu, it will be considered user-friendly enough to make a comeback.

At first, Xubuntu Gutsy was to include a Places Plugin for the panel, just like Ubuntu has. Unfortunately, despite the usefulness of this panel plugin, it is considered too unstable for inclusion (as in: it crashes when trying to open a certain type of folder) so it won’t make it into the final release. Hopefully it will be stable enough by the time Hardy Heron, the version after Gutsy, is released. And of course, it still is available so you can add it to your panel yourself.

To replace the user-unfriendly Gxine, the Totem media player is now included by default. Unfortunately, it is named a bit odd in the Applications menu (Movie Player) because it will also play your audio files with ease.

However, as opposed to Ubuntu (which uses Gstreamer), Xubuntu uses xine behind the scenes to play your files. This is mainly motivated by the fact that, by using xine, Totem has better support to play DVD’s (Gstreamer for one has problems displaying the menu). The downside of this, however, is that it does not include support for automatic lookup of suitable codecs to play your files. This means that it will produce and error when trying to play files restricted by legal issues, unless you have installed the suitable codecs yourself. If Gstreamer were used, it would ask you whether you’d want to install the required codecs and then automatically look them up and install them for you.

Brasero replaces the redundant Xfburn, which was no longer in development and missed a few important features. The choice of a burning application for Xubuntu was a difficult one. Most of the settled applications where either no longer in development, missed important features or were specifically made for KDE. Brasero, however, seems like a good choice.

To replace and complement xfce4-taskmanager, Xubuntu now includes Gnome’s System Monitor. When you open it, you will be presented with the Resources tab open, displaying the current load on your system.

There is yet more though. Take the System tab for example. This tab is amazingly simple yet invaluable because it is the first graphical way of seeing which version of Xubuntu you are running (and yes, for now, if one has this application installed, you already know he’s running Gutsy). The System tab also displays your host name (the name of your computer), the version of the kernel, the amount of memory and type of processor, and the available disk space.

But lets not forget the Processes tab, which displays all running processes just like xfce4-taskmanager used to do. However, System Monitor displays a bit more information than xfce4-taskmanager (most importantly: it has icons next to the processes and an easy button to force an application to quit).

Finally, there is the File Systems tab, which I think is supposed to display information about your different partitions, but (probably because I was working from a LiveCD) it was empty for me.

Enabled by default in Xubuntu Gutsy is Update Notifier, which, surprisingly, notifies you when updates are available and allows you to easily install them.

Network Manager is an excellent application that makes it extremely easy to switch networks, which is very useful for laptop users often using different networks (e.g. one at work, another at home). It is represented by an icon in the system tray.

Clicking the icon pops up a list with available networks which take a single click to configure. Once you’ve configured your networks, it will be able to connect automatically next time it finds it. Unfortunately, I am on a computer that only has a wired connection (with which, by the way, it automatically connected), so I cannot show it to you.

Clicking Manual Configuration opens Network Admin, which was already present in previous Xubuntu versions. You can still use it to configure your network without using Network Manager (yes, I find the names confusing too) by disabling roaming mode. Both methods support WPA encryption if your hardware supports it.

Gutsy also ships Character Map, a simple applications that makes it easy to look up special characters like é, á or even Æ, õ and ø!

Automatic printer configuration should automatically configure your printers when they are plugged in (you can’t get it easier than that!). Unfortunately, I do not have a printer so I could not try it out.

The next one in fact concerns not one, but seventeen (!) applications, but since it’d be a lot of work to discuss them all I’ll just mention them as one: Gnome’s Games! I can tell you that, at least for me, this is a very welcome addition. And the quality of these games is excellent!

One of the included games is the hyped Sudoku puzzle game, which my mother greatly enjoys🙂

The little things

Apart from all these big improvements, there are also a few subtle little changes that make the whole experience just that tiny bit more pleasant.

As every default application now has an icon in the menu, the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Esc couldn’t lag behind. This key combination allows you to click a window that might have crashed in order to force it to close. However, in previous versions, the cursor would change to an ugly black skull. Now, however, it is an elegant cross that fits in with the rest of the cursor theme.

In order to make Xubuntu even easier to get used to, and so as to prevent people from missing the documentation that was crafted with such care by allthosesuperbvolunteers, Xubuntu now by default has a help icon in the panel.

When saving or opening a file, you can now view Recently Used documents and Search for them.

Instead of displaying six buttons in a row like done in previous versions of Xubuntu, the Logout dialog now displays the buttons in two rows.

And you can still remove either or both the Suspend and Hibernate buttons which will neatly resize the buttons on that row to make it of equal width to the row above.

In previous versions, when shutting down, you would first see scary console text flying by for a bit until it switched to the easy-on-the-eyes logo with the progress bar. Well, that still happens, the scary text isn’t visible as long as it used to.

Speed

As you might have noticed from the screenshots, the machine I tested this on was quite a high-end machine. However, for those of you worried about the speed, Carrie offers reassurance in the comments:

I just installed Xubuntu 7.10 over the weekend on a PII 400 Mhz, 384 MB RAM test computer I have. I love the new look default theme on it. I was highly impressed with everything I saw as I clicked around in the menus and different settings. I enabled the effects as well and they worked beautifully.

One thing I noticed right away with the 2.6.22-14 kernel is everything is much more responsive than before. A very happy surprise. Including booting up. Instead of a two minute start up time under Feisty, it takes about a minute and a half.

Conclusion

That was a long, long read🙂
I think this may well be considered the most important release since 6.06 “Dapper Drake”, which was Xubuntu’s first official release. Just as Ubuntu’s, Xubuntu’s goal has always been to be a user-friendly distribution, and it took a giant leap forwards and is even more so with this release. It will also be a good base to build on for the next Long Term Support version, 8.04 “Hardy Heron”, slated for release in April 2008.

Have you also tried Gutsy, and did you find it as awesome as I did (or perhaps you found it to be the worst release ever), or have I missed anything? Do not hesitate to use the comment form below!

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60 Responses to “This is Gutsy”

I’m sad to see xarchiver go. It may be seen as user-unfriendly, but I wish MPlayer replaced gxine.

xfburn was pretty useless, but I’ve never been able to get Brasero to work at all. Graveman may no longer be in development, but it “just works”.

The new kernel sounds great, but my CD burner hasn’t been able to work in any kernel from versions 2.6.20-13 up.

And still no catfish! Oh well, the search in the file dialog box is an improvement.

I’m sorry if I sound disappointed. I’m not; I’m just a little overwhelmed. One of my favourite things about XFCE were its small, robust programs. It sounds like Xubuntu is now bloated with Gnome libs. All these extra programs (Update Notifier, Network Manager, Character Map, ntfs-3g) make it sound like I’m going back to Linux Mint XFCE (which I found bloated). If that’s what I wanted, I’d use that.

Of course, there’s some good things too…an updated Gimp (which I use on Feisty), automatic printer configuration, games, and the default theme that looks a lot like the one I’m using right now.😉

I’m sure my opinions will change over time, but right now I’m really unsure. We’ll see.

Yeah, I didn’t really find it user-unfriendly… But Guiseppe is working hard on the new version, so I hope it will be packaged and shipped with Hardy🙂

It may be seen as user-unfriendly, but I wish MPlayer replaced gxine.

That won’t happen any time soon, because Mplayer ships with restricted codecs (IIRC).

xfburn was pretty useless, but I’ve never been able to get Brasero to work at all. Graveman may no longer be in development, but it “just works”.

Hopefull Brasero also “just works”🙂

The new kernel sounds great, but my CD burner hasn’t been able to work in any kernel from versions 2.6.20-13 up.

And still no catfish! Oh well, the search in the file dialog box is an improvement.

Yeah, I was surprised too, because the search in the dialog box supports Tracker and Beagle. Beagle obviously isn’t present, but as Search works, Tracker must already be present…

I’m sorry if I sound disappointed. I’m not; I’m just a little overwhelmed. One of my favourite things about XFCE were its small, robust programs. It sounds like Xubuntu is now bloated with Gnome libs. All these extra programs (Update Notifier, Network Manager, Character Map, ntfs-3g) make it sound like I’m going back to Linux Mint XFCE (which I found bloated). If that’s what I wanted, I’d use that.

It might seem more bloated, but compared to Linux Mint it certainly still is lean😉

But anyway, it still seems to feel faster than Feisty. I can’t really tell because I run it from USB drive, but another review says so. It might be because of the new Murrine-based theme.

Of course, there’s some good things too…an updated Gimp (which I use on Feisty), automatic printer configuration, games, and the default theme that looks a lot like the one I’m using right now.😉

I’m sure my opinions will change over time, but right now I’m really unsure. We’ll see.

Nice summary of XYbuntu features and changes, but you haven’t actually said how it runs and on what sort of box. What is the minimum RAM?
I guess you have 1GB RAM (shown in the System Monitor tab), but almost anything will run well with 1GB RAM. (even Vista!!)

It looks nice though, but appearance at a cost to performance IMO isn’t the way forward.

anticapitalista, you’re right, I did make the screenshots at a very high-end machine. I’ve also run it on my normal machine (and will do so again once I’ve downloaded today’s daily build) where it also ran fine. But though it isn’t exactly new, it still has 512MB RAM so that should not be a surprise. However, do realize that a year has passed since Dapper, so all machines that already were old back then have become yet another year older. As I said, I don’t think performance has been hit too much.

In any case, most of the added Gnome libraries are only started when you run a Gnome application! So if you don’t like it, you can just uninstall Totem, Brasero and what-not and enjoy the lean and mean system that’s left.

A good review. You spent too much time on needless details, but its obvious to me that you took the time to explore the distro’s livecd in great detail. Bear in mind that the livecd experience is an inaccurate picture into how a distro actually performs when installed, so this is really just a review of an uninstalled system. I do have both Xubuntu and Ubuntu installed on two very different systems and it runs pretty well, aside from the borked X server configs now with the new setups. It took me quite some time to get my dual screens working and quite alot of command line trickery. All in all, I would say that Gutsy is NOT nearly as user/noob friendly as its predecessors in its current buggy state. My hopes are that they can nail down the critical bugs with xorg and X display configs prior to release.

davemc, you’re right, but on the other hand you should also bear in mind that I ran it from my USB drive in a persistent session. Not quite the installed experience, but at least more so than a “normal” LiveCD.

It’s looking great but performance and speed are important. Everyone is going to complain about this when it’s released. I personally use Dapper Drake as it’s faster than Feisty and has the security support I need until 2011. But I’m hoping someone will come up with a way to speed up Gutsy.

Neostar, performance and speed are important but Xubuntu’s goal is, and always has been, to be a user-friendly distribution, just like it’s sister project Ubuntu.

Still, I think people are fearing the speed compromise way too much. It might have some heavier applications installed by default but, also thanks to the Murrine engine, it will still run fast enough to boot in most cases. It is then up to the users to remove heavy-weight applications if they don’t want them. Yes, it’s more of a hassle, but since those people prefer speed over user-friendliness in the first place, that shouldn’t be such a problem.

Thanks for sharing all that great information! I tried Xubuntu during Dapper, but I didn’t like what I saw. It was missing so many of the GUI tools that Ubuntu and Kubuntu came with. Now it sounds likes it will do most of the things that the others do (except automatic codec installation).

So the age-old question remains: Is Xubuntu more light-weight than Ubuntu and Kubuntu? It seems to integrate so many of the apps that I wonder if it really different. What is the reason that you use Xubuntu?

Seems like a big improvement over previous releases, I’m running Ubuntu Feisty now but I’m really tempted to choose Xubuntu from Gutsy releases. Especially since my machine is a very old one and few of the reasons I chose Ubuntu in the first place seems invalid now. Thanks for the review.

So the age-old question remains: Is Xubuntu more light-weight than Ubuntu and Kubuntu? It seems to integrate so many of the apps that I wonder if it really different. What is the reason that you use Xubuntu?

Well, first of all for its speed: it really is faster than Ubuntu, and still is with Gutsy. For example, when I had Ubuntu (a long time ago) there was a little lag between clicking e.g. “Applications” and the menu actually opening. With Xubuntu, everything is snappy and responds in an instance.

However, I also find Xubuntu that Xfce has a lot of small but very useful configuration options without becoming cluttered. And I like Xubuntu’s theme better than Ubuntu’s, but well, I can change that😉

And the reason I prefer Xubuntu over other Xfce distributions is because it is not so bloated, cleaner, and has more packages available.

And lastly – it’s nice being with the underdog😉

Seems like a big improvement over previous releases, I’m running Ubuntu Feisty now but I’m really tempted to choose Xubuntu from Gutsy releases. Especially since my machine is a very old one and few of the reasons I chose Ubuntu in the first place seems invalid now. Thanks for the review.

Yeah, I feel the same. I always thought Ubuntu still to be more user-friendly even though it was slower, but now about all the great stuff in Ubuntu is coming to Xubuntu. I also hope this will make Xubuntu more recognised so that e.g. in the packaging of applications, it is taken into consideration more (e.g. Compiz pulls in Metacity) and perhaps, some day, to be available in ShipIt😉

I really do not like that window decorations. Too glossy for my taste, I hope it is not the default in the final release!

You bet they will be default, too late to change now😉

Ah well, you can easily change them yourself🙂

philosophyoflife, thanks, it’s always nice to be appreciated!

Oh great, a new GNOME Ubuntu…

Then again, which distribution is often the first people think of with “user-friendly Linux”? Ubuntu! So Xubuntu is very user-friendly now, but still faster🙂

I still like the fact that Xfce is similar to gnome in appearance, while at the same time it’s easier to config in some areas to my liking. On some occasions Gnome just feels like it’s restricting if I try to some custom configurations, such as adding custom keybindings.

Personally I’m a fan of Xubuntu because it has the LPAE (lightweight, agile, productive and efficient) feel to it while still being usable.

I just installed Xubuntu 7.10 over the weekend on a PII 400 Mhz, 384 MB RAM test computer I have. I love the new look default theme on it. I was highly impressed with everything I saw as I clicked around in the menus and different settings. I enabled the effects as well and they worked beautifully.

One thing I noticed right away with the 2.6.22-14 kernel is everything is much more responsive than before. A very happy surprise. Including booting up. Instead of a two minute start up time under Feisty, it takes about a minute and a half.

I may switch over from Ubuntu to Xubuntu when I do finally install Gutsy on a few other computers I have.

My only disappointment is Network Manager. For whatever reason, even under Ubuntu, I can’t get the darned thing to connect to my hidden network once I give it all the information. Once I remove it though, everything is fine.

Carrie, thank you, it’s good to know that it also runs well on that system, I’ve added your comment to the post🙂

One question though, what do you mean by: I enabled the effects as well and they worked beautifully.?

As for Network Manager, I also had one machine on which it didn’t work, but I didn’t need to remove it to get it to work: you just have to select Manual Configuration which will open a network-admin window in which you can uncheck Enable roaming mode.🙂

Hi,
I haven’t used Xubuntu 7.10, but looking at the programs added I think it’s getting too closer to Gnome, this means it is starting to get to heavy for my elder machine😦
Can you suggest a Debian-based distro with XFCE? Or some tutorial to get Xubuntu 7.10 lighter?

BL, first of all, Xubuntu 7.10 doesn’t really seem to have become heavier… Perhaps some of the applications are heavier, but you can just install the applications you used in Feisty if you want (e.g. you can install Xarchiver). I don’t really know about Debian based Xfce distributions, but you can check the Xfce website.

I have always been a fan of Xubuntu. I find it sleek and usable. I have been using PCLinuxOS 2007, for it gives out of the box multimedia support. Let me try Xubuntu and compare the both.
Anways, the review is good.

My only hesitation over upgrading is Network Manager. Getting away from it was part of the reason I switched to Xubuntu. It always seemed to require some voodoo to make it hold a connection, and the whole Pam Keyring thing never worked for me so I’d always have to enter the default keyring password…

I’ve been using wifi-radar ever since, and it just works(tm) for me by connecting to the closest wireless it’s been configured for without questions.

Looking at posts on UbuntuForums, people are still having nm_applet issues. I don’t like uninstalling default software or messing with it too much because that always seems to cause problems down the line.

Phi, then you’ll be glad to hear that you can also just use network-admin that Xubuntu uses in Feisty, just select “Manual configuration” from Network Manager’s menu or open network-admin from Applications->System->Network and, in configuring your network, uncheck “Enable roaming mode”.

Does anyone have a sense for how much additional disk space Xubuntu (Gutsy) requires? I’ve got Feisty installed on my beat up old VAIO laptop (which has a 4G CF card instead of an HD), so I’m a little nervous about the footprint… I’m upgrading a copy in a VM right now, to see if I can measure the difference.

Great review: thanks for all the hard work you put into it. I’ve been using it for a month now and while it didn’t recognize my videocard, I found the driver and it’s freakin’ perfect now. I also really, really like the clean, efficient desktop that Xfce creates. Gnome has gotten to the point where it’s both old and bloated. KDE is fine, but again, I don’t use it, so why install it?

Yup ! Great review, made me come back to Xubuntu !🙂 a little disappointed by the “gnomisation” of this great distro, but Gutsy is a great release, anyway.

Just a tip : you complained about the slowness of File-roller, and the non-development of Xarchiver : did you have a look @ sqeeze (http://squeeze.xfce.org/) ? It looks very promising, and it seems that it is already scheduled to be added un Hardy ! Great software !

And yes, I’ve tried Squeeze, it does look very good (too bad it wasn’t stable and thus couldn’t be included) but I never stuck with it since I mostly use Archivers from the context menu in Thunar, and Squeeze wasn’t there.

I really like the new Xubuntu theme, but the only thing preventing me from using it full-time on my machine is that I can not just go to a menu called “Network”(or something similar) and browse my windows file shares like I can in Unbuntu or Kubuntu. I really do like the speed of this release, but this is only thing I cannot live without in my everyday OS. Does anyone have a good solution? Any help is appreciated.

Max, I think you’re looking for something called PyNeighborhood, on which grumpymole has a quick guide. I’ve also understood that it is an important issue within the Xubuntu community so let’s cross our fingers that it makes it into a release someday soon. In fact, it might be worked on in upstream Thunar…